Editing Mesh Sequences with Varying Connectivity

TL;DR

The paper addresses editing time-varying meshes with changing connectivity, where inter-frame correspondence is not known. It introduces a three-stage, time-consistent editing framework that uses sparse volume correspondences, dual-quaternion blending for rigid transforms, and topology-aware center affinities to propagate edits across frames and deform the surface, complemented by adaptive mesh subdivision and loop closure capabilities. Key contributions include a complete TVM editing pipeline, a dual-quaternion deformation representation, and an affinity-guided weighting scheme that preserves topological structure, demonstrated against baseline approaches. The work enables natural, automated edits on complex TVMs, reducing per-frame manual work and supporting practical applications in graphics and animation.

Abstract

Time-varying connectivity of triangle mesh sequences leads to substantial difficulties in their processing. Unlike editing sequences with constant connectivity, editing sequences with varying connectivity requires addressing the problem of temporal correspondence between the frames of the sequence. We present a method for time-consistent editing of triangle mesh sequences with varying connectivity using sparse temporal correspondence, which can be obtained using existing methods. Our method includes a deformation model based on the usage of the sparse temporal correspondence, which is suitable for the temporal propagation of user-specified deformations of the edited surface with respect to the shape and true topology of the surface while preserving the individual connectivity of each frame. Since there is no other method capable of comparable types of editing on time-varying meshes, we compare our method and the proposed deformation model with a baseline approach and demonstrate the benefits of our framework.

Figures (16)

• Figure 1: Outline of the proposed editing framework. The edited data shows the volume expansion in the head region and the subsequent time-consistent propagation of the editing to the entire sequence.
• Figure 2: Example of the disappearance of part of the surface due to self-contact. Left: The entire surface of the left hand is visible. Right: Part of the surface of the left hand is missing.
• Figure 3: Visualization of the affinity of centers. Spatially close centers that are geodesically distant have a low affinity.
• Figure 4: Diagram illustrating the subdivision of an edge and its incident triangle faces.
• Figure 5: Example of increasing center attraction to slim the figure at the waist. Left: Original. Right: Edited. Note that because center affinity has been used for distributing the edit, the hands of the model remain unaffected.